You mean I do this for free? You must be crazy.

Often when I'm out photographing or reviewing music I'll get someone come up to me and want to chat about what I do - not all of them as confrontational or confused as the dude I wrote about in the last post. A lot of times they just want to know about the behind-the-scenes part of it.

A couple of reviews

It's been a busy week/month/year, so this week I'm not going to get around to writing anything new for the blog. What you get instead is a couple of previously unpublished reviews of albums that I've really been enjoying lately.  They're two completely different and contrasting albums, so hopefully at least one will appeal to your discerning musical tastes.

Heard these albums yet?  What did you think of them? What new music have you been listening to?  Drop a comment below and let me know all about it.

Don't hate the media, become the media

Recently I was asked to review the latest album from Wooden Shjips.  I wrote a review based on what I heard from the album, what I personally thought of it and the impression it made on me.  I was asked to rewrite it to fit with the editorial style of the website I was writing for, which I didn't have too much of a problem with, but I thought it made an interesting point about the difference between a review and a publicity piece.

Last weeks listening list, for your reading pleasure

Another mixed bag of musical treats got the call up to my playlist last week.  Here's the highlights:

Miles Davis and John Coltrane, two of the jazz greats, together?  What's not to like?  Well, the sound quality on Abstract Impressions mainly.  If you can get past that then this is a pretty good introduction to both musicians, and they're in fine form here.  It's not the cutting edge Miles, that phase of experimentation started shortly after this was recorded, but if you want to hear him, and Coltrane, playing some of the songs that made them both huge names, then this should do it for you.